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C239 



Our Country's New Era: 



AN ADDRESS 



Society of the Alumni 



WITTENBERG COLLEGE, 



AT THE COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT, SPRINGFIELD, OHIO, 
JUNE 25, A. D. 1S73. 



.•" 



HON. JACOB D". COX, 



\ 



^ SPRINGFIELD, O. : 
PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. 

iS73- 

s.tT; 



.1 A 



OUR COUNTRY'S NEW ERA. 



It is already a trite saying, that our republic entered 
upon a new era of its history at the close of the late 
war. Unfortunately, trite sayings are most apt to re- 
ceive a mechanical sort of assent which implies very 
little thought ; and truths which ought to be fruitkil 
lose their stimulating force by mere dint ot frequent 
repetition, and are received with a languid recognition 
and drowsy acquiescence, which quite takes the life out 
of them. 

So, I fancy, many a young man who is entering upon 
his career says to himself, " True, we are at the begin- 
ning of a new era," and may have a vague idea that it 
is a glorious thing, and that we are somehow in a more 
imposing and noble attitude among the nations ; but 
does not stop to inquire what the new era means, nor 
whether it implies any new relations or larger respon- 
sibilities tor himself 

It has seemed to me that I could do no better than 
call your attention to some of the characteristics of this 
new era as they present themselves to me; to point out 
some of the tendencies of the time, both good and bad, 
and some of the dangers as well as the glories that may 
be in store for us. 

The influence of the liberally educated young men 
of the country may guide the national career, and 
ought, at least, to be strong enough to prevent our 



An Address: 



being swept away from the right path of progress. It 
is too true that this class keeps more and more aloof 
from active political life; but it is also happily true 
that the spread of opinion outward from the most in- 
telligent and cultivated, goes on quietly and steadily, 
forming a public sentiment, which, soon or late, con- 
trols politicians and legislatures. 

It would not be rash to say that if the graduates of 
American colleges during the present decade were of 
one heart and mind as to the larger policy of the 
country, agreeing upon the true theory of progress, its 
proper direction and character, and uniting in a com- 
mon, earnest desire and purpose to guide the nation in 
accordance with it, they would give to its affairs a direc- 
tion and bent, which would control its destiny for a cen- 
tury — perhaps for many centuries. 

To do this, it would not be necessary to enter into 
the debasing struggle for place. On the contrary, it 
would demand the most complete indifference to all 
that the lower order of politicians prizes and strives for. 
Those who would make changes in public opinion nec- 
essarily find their work anything but a popular one, and 
that it does not lead them into much political tempta- 
tion ; at least, they are not likely to be tempted much 
with places of power and importance. Their work is 
essentially that of minorities ; and when they have 
educated the community to the point where they find 
the majority with them, it will probably be only when 
the vigor of their life is spent. 

There is no occasion to complain of this. It is a 
natural law of popular government that their elected 
officers should be, at best, only the exponents of the 
average condition of public sentiment; and those who 
love place and set their ambition upon it, shrink in- 



Oziv Country's J^ew Era. 



stinctively from getting in advance of the community 
to whose suffrages they look for a continuance of polit- 
ical life. 

Let us accept the result, and recognize the fact that 
public opinion must be formed by another class than 
the professed politicians, and that it is the office of 
these simply to obey the word of command when the 
people have been taught to give it by those who know 
how to teach. 

Here is a noble sense in which you may become " the 
power behind the throne;" for no generous mind will 
doubt that it is nobler to do one's part in molding 
public sentiment, than to seek power by shouting with 
the majority of the moment. They who feel repelled 
from the intrigues and ambitions of common politics, 
may still find ample room for the exertion of all their 
powers to benefit their fellow-men, and be assured that 
their work will be all the more efficient by reason of its 
being free from any appearance of self-seeking. 

The nation has passed from its youth to its man- 
hood. Its place among the peoples of the earth is no 
longer in doubt. It has endured every test of the 
strength of its frame and the vigor of its constitution 
which nations are commonly tried with ; and nobody 
now questions its right to rank among the first powers 
of the world. The last great trial it had to undergo, 
settled the last of the doubts which a statesman of the 
Old World would be likely to harbor, and proved that 
the republic was strong enough in its internal organiza- 
tion to endure the shock of a great civil war, to put 
great armies in the field, to submit for years to the ex- 
ceptional powers of a semi-military government for the 
whole country, and yet return quietly to the old ways 
of self-government and representative rule. 



An Address : 



In mere bulk, also, it has outgrown most of its 
rivals, and has the prestige which only superior force 
can give: for human civilization has not yet made obso- 
lete the proverb, that *' might makes right ;" and the claim 
to mere existence and independence is not sacred, even in 
the eyes of republics, till it is backed by power enough 
to make it respected and to uphold it against all comers. 
Until the establishment of the new German Empire, 
no modern nation has numbered more than forty mill- 
ions of civilized citizens. By counting wild hordes 
which were theirs only because they livtd within their 
geographical borders, or by including in a similar way 
dependencies held only by the power of conquest and 
which never became part of the nation itself, several 
modern powers have pretended to a greater numerical 
strength than that named; but if we look simply to 
the elements which have a natural unity, and which give 
a people its power for defense or for aggression, to 
which may be addressed appeals to patriotism, and 
from which the safety and perpetuity of the political 
organization must come, it can not be denied that our 
country to-day has as great physical strength as any na- 
tion which has existed since the Christian era. When, 
to this estimate of absolute power, we add the fact that 
there neither is nor can be any dangerous neighbor; that 
our government is not only "easily chief" on the 
American continent, but that our only real rivals are sepa- 
rated from us by great oceans, — it becomes plain that it 
is strictly within the bounds of moderation to say that 
no nation on earth is so strong relatively to others, or 
is so completely free from dangers of external trouble 
and foreign invasion or war. 

I fear you may begin to think that the near ap- 
proach of our national anniversary is having its influence 



Our Country's JNew Era. 7 

upon me, and that I am running into the vein of brag- 
gadocio which is the established type of Fourth-of- 
July oratory. My purpose is really the opposite of 
this. The conclusion I would draw, is, that with 
the fully developed power of manhood should come 
the modesty of assured position and strength. The 
rapidly growing boy's awkwardness has given place to 
matured symmetry of limb and muscle; and the ten- 
dency of his associates to ridicule his proportions and 
his gait, has changed to admiration and respect. It is 
time then to put ofFboyish bravado and quarrelsomeness. 
It is no longer worth while to go about asking who 
dares knock the chip off his shoulder, or to go through 
the youngster's alternations between speechless bashful- 
ness in society and fierce assertions of his place and 
position. 

It was for a long time treated as an open question, 
whether there was not danger of our republican insti- 
tutions being overthrown, and some form of monarchy 
substituted for them. Here and there a theorist would 
argue that the evils of democracy outweighed all others ; 
and it was perhaps a popular delusion that an aristocratic 
or monarchic party was at work undermining the founda- 
tions of the republic. No one will deny that this fear 
may now be sent to the limbo of abolished bugbears; 
and a little reflection will show that it never had a reason 
for its existence. Governmental institutions, like man- 
ners and customs, are the outgrowth of natural ten- 
dencies of human nature, modified by circumstances 
of time and place. You may impose a rule upon a 
people by external force; but until you have crushed all 
native peculiarities of character out of them, it will 
not be accepted by them, and will remain an odious 
foreign tyranny, as much hated after centuries of do- 



An Address 



minion as it was at first. The instances in history 
which seem to point to a different conclusion, will be 
found on examination not to be inconsistent with the 
position stated. It is said that Alsace, though a Ger- 
man province, had, in the two centuries after its con- 
quest by Louis XIV, become French in sentiment and 
affection; so that its people to-day regard their absorp- 
tion into the German Empire with as much aversion 
as the people of Orleans or the Isle de France would 
do. The full truth of the assertion might be ques- 
tioned ; but waiving that, it is still plain that the his- 
tory of Alsace shows little ground for the growth of 
anything like a national character. A petty principal- 
ity on the border land between France and Germany, 
the debatable ground in every struggle between them, 
never long incorporated into any great power, and 
never strong enough to stand alone, a change of mas- 
ters was for it a matter of common occurrence — almost 
the normal condition of things; and we can easily un- 
derstand that when it became a French province, and 
the policy of that government was to foster its ma- 
terial welfare, and make all its burdens easy, there was 
no hereditary patriotism or stubborn nationality of 
character making the Alsaciens so distinctively Ger- 
man that the present generation should feel that they 
had any national part in the Fatherland of the Prus- 
sian or Saxon across the Rhine. For them it was a 
mere change of rulers — putting off an easy yoke, under 
which they had grown fat and contented, for an untried 
one. . It was not returning to any former condition or 
traditionary goverment ; for in the seventeenth century 
there was no real nationality in Germany, and the 
Prussian was as much a foreignec to them as the Bohe- 
mian or the Hun. The great revival of German 



Our Country's J^eiv Era. 



unity in the past generation found Alsace outside the 
pale, and we must wait for another generation to prove 
to us whether the influences of blood and race will not 
revive, and a single lifetime undo all that two centuries 
of French rule had accomplished. 

Our own case is much more analogous to that of the 
ancient republics, because they alone give us instances 
^ of the natural development of changes in society and 
government from purely internal causes. From the 
overthrow of the Roman kings to the establishment of 
the empire was a little over four hundred years; and 
even that long period scarce measures half the time 
during which the traditional and hereditary hatred of 
the name and the insignia of royalty prevented the most 
ambitious of rulers from assuming the name of king. 
When we remember that this was so in a people which 
had none of the advantages of popular education, and 
who must therefore depend upon oral mculcation of 
principle and transmission of sentiment from father to 
son, it is not difficult to believe that political tenden- 
cies, like physical and mental peculiarities, become 
hereditary, and so lead to their own perpetuation and to 
independent and characteristic development. 

I shall have occasion to recur to this subject and to 
some of its modifications and limitations; but the pres- 
ent statement is enough to warrant the conclusion there 
has never been, since the beginning of the eighteenth 
century at least, a time when there was either the danger 
or the possibility that any other than a republican govern- 
ment could exist in our country. Aristocratic distinc- 
tions in society never took root here. The law of the 
" survival of the fittest " receives strong confirmation 
in the history of American settlements, where the vig- 
orous republicanism of the New England Puritans was 



lo An Address : 



planted in a congenial soil, and soon occupied the 
ground, to the exclusion and death of every other po- 
litical principle. The few titled nobles who were tempted 
into the country seldom stayed long, or if they did, 
they remained as exotics ; and there was never more 
chance for a hereditary nobility to become naturalized 
here than there was for the propagation of forest trees 
upon the wild prairies. The native growth smothered 
the foreign germ with the inevitableness of fate. 

In the new era of our history we start with the assur- 
ance of certainty that no external interference can 
seriously derange the natural progress of our develop- 
ment. The causes which shall work out blessings or 
curses for us must be all internal. There may be ac- 
cretions of territory and of communities now outside 
of our limits, or there may be divisions and secessions 
by which members of the federal union may break 
away or be expelled; but, in any event, there must re- 
main a great republican nation, ranking in numbers and 
wealth among the very first in the world, and maintain- 
ing the forms of self-government. It is no invasion of 
the domain of prophecy to say that the analogy of causes 
which we know have worked in the history of the world 
hitherto, makes it safe tO' assume that the duration of 
our government in its present form in all essential re- 
spects, will not be less than that of the most durable 
political organizations of any historic epoch. The era 
of our national youth was that in which the patriot's 
duty was to fix the formative principles of government, 
and give them such nourishment as to insure our reach- 
ing maturity. That care may now be dismissed. It is 
not rash to say that for thousands of years there will be 
a great republic on this continent occupying its tem- 
perate zone. The task for us and our children will be 



Our Country's J^ew Era. 1 1 

to see to it that republicanism shall be fruitful in bless- 
ings as it ought to be; that under the forms of freedom 
there may not be abuses of government as bad as any des- 
potism produces ; that we shall recognize the truth that 
our system will be a failure unless it secures the greatest 
practical good for all, minorities as well as majorities, 
individuals as well as communities. 

We have been to apt to assume that there is a sov- 
ereign virtue in the mere form of democratic govern- 
ment ; and we have had a way of tossing our hats into 
the air and shouting ourselves hoarse every time a so- 
called republic is set up in Europe — never stopping to 
ask whether the people have become fit for it since the 
last fiasco of that sort happened. There can be no 
doubt at all that modern progress is in the direction of 
republicanism ; and to my mind there is just as little 
doubt that changes of the form of government are 
likely to go on faster than the internal preparation of 
the people for them. It is of infinitely more conse- 
quence that the people should show that they understand 
the nature of representative government in their legis- 
latures, and that they have the respect for law which 
makes the rights of minorities as safe as those ot ma- 
jorities, than they should elect their chief executive. 
Our forms of self-government simply put the responsi- 
bility more squarely upon us to make the government 
a good or a bad one, and we may be quite sure that 
there is no corruption in human societies so utterly un- 
endurable as that of a rotten democracy. When the 
ballot-box registers only the will of your Tweeds and 
Barnards, as has been the case in more cities than one — 
when organized lobbies can reckon to a dollar upon the 
cost of any legislation by which " rings " may wish to 
fleece the public, as has been the case in more states 



12 yin Address 



than one; — when this depravity reaches national as well 
as local affairs, and the moral sense of the community 
becomes so torpid that only faint protests are heard, 
and no combined and energetic activity in reform fol- 
lows, — though we may still call ourselves a republic, the 
subjects of the Czar may sarcastically wish us joy of 
our freedom, and thank God that no such progress has 
reached the Russias, 

My own faith is unfaltering that the result with us 
will not ultimately be disastrous ; but I would not con- 
ceal the belief that we have many tribulations to pass 
through before we shall reach the experienced wisdom 
and general practical virtue needed to make self-rule a 
real success. We shall many a time have to hang our 
heads at the exposure of our shame ; but at last we 
shall learn the lesson, and solve the problem of the 
harmony of the greatest general good with the least in- 
dividual discomfort. The best guarantv for a good 
outcome is found in the national capacity to learn by 
our own experience. I have somewhere seen it said 
that an intelligent Hindoo described the difference be- 
tween his own people and the English as consisting 
chiefly in the fact that the European seemed to have ac- 
cumulated as capital the whole experience of former ages 
and to make constant use of it, whilst the Asiatic re- 
peated mechanically the customs of his fathers, with al- 
most as little thought of improvement as the birds in the 
trees. In this country, circumstances have intensified 
the practical readiness and invention which characterized 
our progenitors; and it is hardly conceivable that the 
great mass of the people shall not retain and transmit 
this hereditary tendency in vigor enough to make it cer- 
tain that the remedy will at last be applied to the great 
mischief from which danger might come to the safety or 
the welfare of the community. 



Our Country's Jlew Era. 13 

I do not propose to discuss or even to enumerate 
the various questions relating to the structure and ma- 
chinery of the government or the organization of its 
co-ordinate departments, some of which are already be- 
ginning to be agitated, and others of which are certain 
soon to be raised. Neither shall I attempt to examine 
any of the questions arising concerning the relations of 
capital and labor, or the conflict of rights and interests 
between classes or individuals. So far as they have 
much present interest, they have already become mat- 
ters of political debate ; and it that were not a good rea- 
son for avoiding them, my time would not permit me 
to discuss even the smallest of them. 

I prefer rather to ask your attention to some phases 
of the question of the physical organization and ex- 
terior relations of the nation ; to inquire briefly what 
is the " manifest destiny " of the American people as 
to its growth and composition ; and to touch upon 
some matters which seem important and interesting in 
these respects. 

The disposition to regard the condition of society 
with which we are familiar, as the natural order of things, 
is so strong that very few people seem to comprehend 
the fact that in nearly every particular our social and 
political organization is an anomaly in the world's his- 
tory. 

We may have a little difl^erent way of putting it, but 
at bottom the common opinion among us does not 
difi^er much from that of the Chinese, to whom all but 
their own people are " outside barbarians." We think 
we live in a condition of things so natural that our 
freedom and general welfare may be left to take care of 
themselves ; and we believe that any painstaking attempt 
to forecast or to provide for the distant future, how- 



14 >^^ Address 



ever curious as mere matter of speculation, is wholly 
useless and unnecessary from any practical point of 
view. 

I shall not take back a word I have said as to my 
confidence in our future; but I still insist that unless 
there be a wide diffusion of intelligence in regard to 
the causes which produce or secure national unity, and 
which develop the characteristics that fit men for self- 
government, we shall be in great danger of going through 
most painful convulsions, and of learning in the most 
costly way what a moderate degree of foresight might 
have taught us. Look, for example, at our recent terrible 
experience in regard to negro slavery. Perhaps no one 
fully comprehended the mischiefs which lay in the hold 
of the ship that brought the first cargo of slaves to 
our coast; but many a man even then could see that 
the tendency of the thing was evil, and more than one 
conscience protested against the wrong. The com- 
mon sentiment of the time, however, did not condemn 
slavery as a crime. T\\q slave-trade itself was not 
thought to be inconsistent with devout piety; and it 
was considered an honorable crest upon the escutcheon 
of Admiral Hawkins, one of the heroes who saved 
England from the Spanish Armada, when he placed 
there the effigy of a manacled negro, in testimony of 
the means by which he had amassed his wealth. To the 
great body of civilized people of that time, the slave- 
trade was simply an innocent method of obtaining cheap 
labor in new colonies. Looking back at it now, we 
marvel at the lack of foresight which permitted the be- 
ginning of so great wrongs and sufferings, and which 
failed to see how the whole people would one day suffer 
the consequences in the terrible scourge of civil war. 
The momentary profit in money, the satisfaction of 



Our Country's JNew Era. 15 

seeing a more rapid growth of the young community, 
totally blinded our fathers to the sure penalties of the 
future. We, their children, may groan out, " Would to 
God they could have seen in that day the things that 
pertained to their peace !" but it may still be questioned 
whether we too are not following their example and 
planting the seeds of future mischiefs almost as great. 

The question may be stated in this general form, 
viz ; Are there any peculiarities of physical, mental, 
and moral organization which are necessary conditions 
of the fitness of a community for self-government and 
for true progress ? 

If we ask whether all existing communities and na- 
tions are fit for democratic institutions, very few of 
our acquaintances would answer yes ; but if we vary 
the form and inquire whether we run any risk in re- 
ceiving within our federal union other states of differ- 
ent race and characteristics, most of the same people 
would hesitate to give an affirmative answer. 

Let us look at some of the conditions of the prob- 
lem from a stand-point a scholar need not be ashamed 
to take. 

In his excellent lectures on Ancient Law, Professor 
Maine says: "In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is 
most difficult for a citizen of Western Europe to bring 
thoroughly home to himself the truth that the civiliza- 
tion which surrounds him is a rare exception in the 
history of the world. The tone of thought common 
among us, all our hopes, fears, and speculations, would 
be materially affected, if we had vividly before us the 
relation of the progressive races in the totality of hu- 
man life. It is indisputable that much the greatest part 
of mankind has never shown a particle of desire that 
its civil institutions should be improved, since the mo- 



i6 ^n Address: 



ment when external completeness was first given to them 
by their embodiment in some permanent record."* 

Not only is this forcible statement true in the very 
general form in which it is here given, but the same 
fact shows itself in the degrees of readiness with which 
the Western nations, classed together by the author as 
progressive, adapt themselves to the work of progress, 
or intrench themselves in forms and habits peculiar to 
themselves. 

In what I have to say on this subject I shall make 
no apology for a somewhat more free use of quotation 
than would commonly be quite consistent with good 
taste, because it is part of my purpose to challenge your 
attention, not so much by what you might consider my 
personal speculations, as by the evidence that established 
authorities in history and political philosophy have 
recognized all the principles from which I shall seek to 
make deductions. In this way it will more forcibly 
appear that we have only to apply the well-known les- 
sons of history to our own case in order to judge 
reasonably of our future, and that we shall be the less 
excusable if we fail to profit by such teaching. 

The most familiar illustration of the different degrees 
of adaptability to civil freedom amongst enlightened 
nations is the contrast between Great Britain and 
France. It is not true that the French people were 
slower in comprehending or admiring the theory of rep- 
resentative government than their neighbors. On the 
contrary, a vivid and quick perception of all that is fine 
in theory and logical in political philosophy has always 
been one of their most marked characteristics. The 
States General were assembled in France almost as 



* Maine's Ancient Law, p. 22. 



Ottr Country's J^ew Era. 17 

early as Parliaments in England ; and Magna Charta was 
not so complete or so systematic a statement of civil 
rights as was several times made in France in the same 
early period. Yet, England has gone steadily forward 
in the path of civil liberty, whilst France has been con- 
stantly vibrating between efforts at complete freedom 
and the most abject submission to complete despotism. 
In the one nation we see the ability to bide their time 
without abandoning a fixed purpose; in the other, an 
impatience of all delay and a skepticism of all results 
which are not to-day within reach. In the one there is 
a willingness to struggle in a minority without losing 
hope ; in the other, a total inability to endure reverses 
or to accept unpopularity. In the one there is a stubborn 
pride in individuality and an egotism that is not dis- 
mayed at standing alone; in the other, a grcgariousness 
that makes them move together under a common im- 
pulse. Dr. Lieber calls this last trait "the Celtic dis- 
position of being swayed in masses, and a consequent 
proclivity toward centralization in politics, religion, and 
literature, and a certain inability to remain long in the 
opposition, or to stand aloof from a party." * 

One of the most judicious of the French historians 
(Henri Martin) has fully recognized this hereditary lack 
of persistence among his countrymen, and its eflfect 
upon their civil progress. He says ; " The idea of 
representative government never became fixed in the 
heart of the people. They invoked the assembly of 
the States General as a great remedy for great evils, and 
forgot them both as soon as the government used any 
moderation or caution in its demands." '\ 

* Civil Liberty and Self- Government, p. 55. 

f " L'idee du gouvernement representatif n'etait point etablie au 
coeur des masses: illes invoquaient les fitats Generaux comme un grand 



1 8 An Address 



It needs no argument to show that national traits of 
character of the kind last referred to, must In a great 
degree determine the capacity of a people for self-gov- 
ernment, and may be reckoned on with as much cer- 
tainty as any other forces in nature. 

It would indeed be rash and unnecessary to assert 
that such traits are absolutely permanent and un- 
changing. The indisputable truth Is enough for our 
purpose, and that truth is that the persistence of such 
characteristics Is so great that we may consider them 
constant forces in all ordinary historic epochs. It is 
very curious, and sometimes amusing, to see to how 
great an extent these hereditary tendencies go. They 
are physical as well as mental, and often show us that 
what we would take for an accident of the character of 
a single person, is in fact the common property of a 
tribe. We should be apt to regard guerilla warfare in 
modern Spain as a peculiarity induced by modern cir- 
cumstances. But Mommsen shows us the same habit 
among the same people as early as the year 76 B. C, 
when Sertorius was able to carry on a desultory war 
against Rome for years, with forces at times amounting 
to 150,000 men, and then melting to a mere handful, 
as caprice would seize them, or as hope or despondency 
alternately swayed them.* 

In every union of peoples of different race these 
stubborn facts in their nature must necessarily make 
themselves felt; and it may be questioned whether mod- 
ern civilization has had much effect in softening the 

remede contre les grands maux, et les oubliaient quand le gouverne- 
ment niettait dans ses exigences un peu de reserve et de moderation." 
Hist, de France, VII, 191. 

* Mommsen : Hist. Rome, Vol. IV, p. 33. 



Our Country's J^ew Era. 19 

asperities and prejudices which have their root in radical 
diversities of thought and of desire, of instinctive loves 
and aversions. The great historical authority I last 
referred to attributed the old wars between Europe and 
Asia to these causes, and says that they were simply 
part of what he calls " the huge duel between the West 
and the East, which has been transmitted from the strug- 
gle of Marathon to the present generation, and will 
perhaps reckon its future by thousands of years, as it 
has reckoned its past." * 

We must not overlook, however, another important 
influence in the case of new nations sprung from col- 
onies, as our own has done; and that is, that upon new 
soil, transplanted men, like plants, often develop new and 
unexpected characters. Who could have predicted that 
a colony from the upper Indus could have become so 
entirely new a type of men as the Greeks became, and 
should have achieved a civilization which has been the 
continued wonder of the world, whilst their cousins in 
the mother country showed no trace of a similar prog- 
ress ? How it was that the new habitat changed the 
man, and what part in the change was due to new neces- 
sities, dangers, and rivalries, co-operating with the in- 
fluences of climate and country, we can not tell. The 
result we know, and that something of a similar kind 
in similar circumstances is by no means rare. Even in 
the brief period since Europeans colonized this country, 
distinctive and easily recognized national traits of per- 
son, feature, and character have been produced in the 
American people. Here the Anglo-Saxon has easily 
fused with the other Teutonic families of Europe; and 
a very few generations have been enough to mold the 

*Mommsen : Hist. Rome, Vol. Ill, p. 278. 



20 An Address 



whole into a common type wherever they have lived in 
the same local community. 

A most interesting example of the often unexpected 
way in which the characteristics of colonists are some- 
times transformed by the power of their new circum- 
stances, is found in the case of the old Norman con- 
querors of Ireland. In an eloquent passage on this 
subject, Froude says; "Prior to experience, it would 
have been equally reasonable to expect that the modern 
Englishman would adopt the habits of the Hindoo or 
the Mohican, as that the fiery knights of Normandy 
would have stooped to imitate a race whom they de- 
spised as slaves ; that they would have flung away their 
very knightly names to assume a barbarous equivalent; 
and would so utterly have cast aside the commanding 
features of their northern extraction, that their children's 
children could be distinguished neither in soul nor 
body, neither in look, in dress, in language, nor in dis- 
position, from the Celts whom they had subdued. Such, 
however, was the extraordinary fact. The Irish who 
had been conquered in the field revenged their defeat on 
the minds and hearts of their conquerors, and in yield- 
ing, yielded only to fling over their new masters the 
subtle spell of the Celtic disposition."* 

Yet there are limitations plainly to be seen in the 
direction and force of this tendency to assimilation. 
The Latin races have not shown a readiness to amalga- 
mate with the other European families ; whilst they 
have, on the other hand, exhibited far less aversion to 
mixing with the native tribes. The French, in Canada, 
from the time of the earliest settlements, took kindly 
to the Indian ways of life; and the ^^ couriers des bois" 

* Froude's England, Vol. II, pp. 241, 242. 



Our Country's J^ew Era. 21 

were the forerunners of a large class of half-breed trap- 
pers, who spread over the continent from the great 
lakes to the Pacific ocean, adopting the habits, cus- 
toms, and language of the wild tribes, and losing their 
own civilization without having the smallest elevating 
influence upon the savages. The assimilation which 
took place in this manner was notoriously a "leveling 
downward," of which the result was unmixed degrada- 
tion. One would have been inclined to predict that the 
English and French in Canada would very soon have 
mingled in one indistinguishable community; but it 
was not so. The ^^ habitans'' of Lower Canada showed 
far more disposition to mix with the Indians than with 
the English ; and when, after the close of our revolu- 
tionary war, the English rule in those provinces was 
fully acquiesced in, the difficulties between the people 
of difi-'erent national descent were such that a territorial 
division of government was made, in the hope that 
such a separation of interests would result in peace. 
The momentary effect seemed good; but Harriet Mar- 
tineau, in her history of England during the present 
century, distinctly traces the so-called "patriot war" 
of 1837 to the jealousies and animosities which proved 
to be hereditary in the races. She says: "The country 
to the west was to be purely British, while the French 
were to keep themselves as unchanged as they pleased. 
The government had no misgiving about this in 1791, 
when the thing was done ; but Mr. Fox foresaw the mis- 
chief that might arise, and gave emphatic warning of it."* 
The history of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies 
in both North and South America only emphasizes the 
facts shown in regard to the French. The practical re- 

'1^ Martlneau's Hist, of England, Vol. IV, p. 128. 



11 An Address 



suit has been, that whichever race has been largely pre- 
dominant in the settlement of colonies of any consider- 
able size, that race has maintained its supremacy in the 
domain of intellectual and moral characteristics, or has 
changed only by partial assimilation with the uncivilized 
population with which it came in contact. Where col- 
onies of the Latin races have been conquered or an- 
nexed by their more vigorous European rivals, they do 
not seem to have become lost in the common mass by 
amalgamation ; or if so, it has been an exceedingly slow 
process : but they have rather seemed to be smothered 
out, and to have dwindled away by a process of steady 
decline — the result of their inability to endure the kind 
of competition or rude struggle for life to which they 
have been subjected under unfavorable circumstances. 
Where they have been kept separate either by a division 
of territory, such as that which was made in Canada, 
or even where their numbers were sufficient to make a 
local community of an inferior size, they have still 
shown that striking tenacity of language, habit, and 
character, which has kept them a separate and peculiar 
people. As soon as they lost the predominance in the 
country they had colonized, the tide of immigration 
almost entirely ceased ; and their relative disadvantage 
was greatly increased by the fact that they were getting 
few recruits from the mother country, whilst the Eng- 
lish and Germanic population was strengthened by 
whole armies of immigrants, and increasing with a 
natural fecundity that proved how well they were 
adapted to the country and the climate. 

For the temperate zone of North America, we may 
safely conclude that the strife is practically ended, and 
that its destinies are permanently committed to an 
English-speaking race of Anglo-German stock, whose 



Otir Country's J^ew Era. 23 

national peculiarities of body and mind will closely 
follow the pattern already known as American. The 
experience of this continent will form no exception to 
the general law which has been discovered in the 
history of the peoples of the Old World, and which 
Merivale calls "the doctrine of the permanence ot 
type in the majority of every mixed population, which 
modern experience so strongly attests."* 

The same law, however, which gives us this as- 
surance as to the future of our own portion of the 
continent, teaches us that during the same great era of 
the future of which we have been speaking, the other Eu- 
ropean communities in tropical and Southern America 
must work out their destiny in an analogous way. If 
they shall mix more and more with the aboriginal tribes, 
we may look for a steady degradation, which will end in 
removing them from the list of civilized peoples. If 
they maintain the general purity of their European 
blood, their line of progress must still be different 
from ours, and their nationality remain as distinct 
from, and, I may say, as irreconcilable with, ours as it 
was in the Old World before their and our ancestors 
had set foot on these shores. The only thing which 
could alter the circumstances sufficiently to produce 
different results, would be a conquest of one by the 
other, followed by so rapid a migration of the con- 
quering people as to change at once the majority in 
the conquered community and its whole organization, 
social as well as political. 

It is safe to say that no such invasion is possible. 
The tropics may charm us when we make them a brief 
visit in winter, and our senses are steeped for a moment 



Merivale : Romans under the Empire, Vol. I, p. 259. 



24 An Address 



in the delights of the contrast between the rigors of the 
North and the luxuriant loveliness of the South ; but 
people of our blood find no congenial home there, 
and when once the first pleasure of novelty is over, we 
cry, with Tennyson's swallow — 

" I do but luanton in the South, 
But in the North long since my nest is made." 

The march of Empire will continue to follow the 
north tem.perate belt as it has heretofore done ; and, 
for any period of time which we may reasonably esti- 
mate, we may be sure there will be no naturalization of 
our race far south of the present limits of our country. 
No doubt there are high plateaus within the tropics 
having an elevation which counteracts in the matter of 
climate, the difference of latitude. But you can not 
occupy a country by holding and inhabiting island-like 
spots on its surface, or mere promontories that jut out 
into the torrid wildernesses of its low lands. That only 
is national occupation which spreads over hills and val- 
leys alike, cultivating the mountain-sides and the coasts 
by one homogeneous people, who find neither situation 
destructive of their life or vigor. 

But I am wearying you, and must hasten to draw 
some conclusions from the facts and arguments I have 
been presenting. 

First, then, with regard to the internal organization 
of the nation and the physical character of the people, 
it would seem to be pretty definitely fixed. The 
natural gregariousness of man, which works almost as 
powerfully in them as in our flocks and herds, will draw 
like to like. Migration from the Old World will con- 
sist almost wholly of those who will quickly and readily 



Our Country's J^ew Era. 25 

assimilate with the prevailing type established here ; and 
the rapid multiplication of the existing population, 
leaves no room to doubt that the law of permanence 
which I have stated, will find no exception here. 

On the western shore of the continent only, is there 
danger that the influx of a permanently foreign and 
incongruous element may assume such proportions as 
to threaten serious trouble in the future. The teeming 
millions of China crowding upon each other within the 
limits of their own empire, have shown within the 
past fifty years a disposition to migrate in numbers 
large enough to form strong colonies. Farther India 
is rapidly filling with them, and they are trying the 
experiment of seeking a foothold in America. 

He who fancies that the question has no greater pro- 
portions than that of the advent of a few immigrants 
from Spain or Italy, seems to me to take a very shallow 
view of the problem. 

I think I have already shown you that a general con- 
currence of the most profound students of history, 
may be said to have settled the proposition that mere 
change of location does not change the peculiarities of 
race. We have seen that even when so closely related 
as the modern English and French are, the stubborn 
hereditary traits of mind and habit will exist side by 
side with little or no promise of harmonizing. 

The Chinese have shown this persistence of type 
perhaps more strikingly than any race on the globe. 
The probabilities, therefore, are all against their be- 
coming Americans in any sense of the word. It is 
likely that their tendencies of mind and character will 
remain with them, and that our institutions, our moral- 
ity, our political tendencies, will all remain foreign to 



i6 An Address: 



them for many generations at least. If so, they will 
remain a foreign substance within the body politic, as 
distinctly such as a leaden bullet would be in the hu- 
man body. If the bullet be small it may become en- 
cysted and remain without harm ; but if its size and 
weight be increased, inflammation and mischief will 
follow as surely as the decrees of fate. If their ten- 
dency to migrate in this direction shall continue to in- 
crease, it is risking very little to say that the day will 
come when we shall bewail the blindness that hesitates 
to apply the remedy, as bitterly as we now bewail that 
former cry for cheap labor, which brought upon us a great 
national sin with its inevitable punishment. In either 
case the stronger party will commit the most flagrant 
wrongs ; but until the millenial day the fact will not be 
altered, and we shall reap the bitter fruit of our oppression 
of the weak, as we have done before. But the subject 
is too large for more than this passing allusion. 

Secondly, I desire to make application of what I 
have been saying to the exterior relations of our country, 
in respect to the extension of our territory. 

There has been no appeal to the average American 
which has generally been stronger than that addressed to 
his desire for what he thinks the glory of his country ; 
and its mere physical extent and numerical population 
have been the forms in which his pride has most often 
pictured its greatness. Hitherto there has been a cer- 
tain degree of excuse for this. The power to sustain 
democratic institutions, in the face of the world, has 
not unnaturally been supposed to depend upon our 
growth into a physical power equal to that of the other 
first-class powers of the earth. This is now accomplished; 
and in the full recognition of it by other nations, it 



Our Country's J^eiv Era. 27 

seems proper to review the subject, and ask whether we 
have anything now to gain by territorial expansion. 
The communities of our own continent and those near 
it, have, like ourselves, assumed fixed types. To absorb 
them is no longer to acquire vacant territory which our 
own increasing people will fill. It would be to take 
old and matured states into our federation ; and I 
assume that the remarks I have already made, warrant 
me in taking it for granted that these states would not 
quickly, if at all, throw off their habits and predilec- 
tions, either natural or acquired. Neither do I believe, 
for reasons also given alreadv, that our people would 
tend to migrate to and settle in those states in large 
numbers — 1 now refer more particularly to those south 
of us. What then would be the result ? Let us sup- 
pose we had drawn within our circumference all the so- 
called republics of both North and South America. 
What should we have accomplished ? It seems to me 
clear as noon-day that we should simply have bought a 
nominal extension of territory at the cost of everything 
resembling real nationality. We should have no unity 
of interest, no common language or literature, no 
community of thought, habit, tendency; but, on the 
contrary, we should have an unnatural alliance, in which 
all interests must clash, in which each would regard 
itself the victim of the rest, in which none would or 
could know or care for the desires of the rest, but all 
be necessarily suspicious and jealous of each. Nations 
and communities essentially foreign to each other can 
only have peace on the footing of independent good 
neighborhood, or of the accepted subjugation of one 
to the other. 

When we talk, then, of annexing a foreign country, 



2 8 An Address: 



we must mean one of two things : either that we pro- 
pose to treat the population practically as we have 
treated the Indians — drive them out and destroy them 
by one process or another — or that we mean to hand 
over to them a proportionate part of the power to rule 
the whole country, ourselves included. 

If we mean .the former, we are only making a con- 
quest, whether we do it by force of arms or by deluding 
the people of the country into the belief that they may 
find profit in it. I have already indicated my belief 
that our race is unequal to the task of peopling the 
tropic zone, and that it will there find in that regard a 
competition with nature that it can not endure. 

If we mean, then, what I think would be the real 
outcome of annexation in that direction, simply to 
unite with ourselves old communities whose race-char- 
acteristics would not be materially modified, and on 
whom we should therefore exert no more modifying in- 
fluence than we now do, the result would be that for 
every representation of such a state in the Senate we 
should have given away a large fraction of the total 
legislative power of the whole country; and in the 
representation in the House, we should introduce a 
strong reinforcement of passion instead of reason, of 
restless desire of change instead of patient faith in con- 
stitutional progress, of disposition to appeal constantly 
to revolution — in short, of all the tumultuous, corrupti- 
ble and corruptinge lements which have made the so- 
called Spanish republics a burlesque on self-government. 
And this we should call national glory ! 

One can easily understand that a monarchic or aris- 
tocratic government should extend its dominion, be- 
cause there is then a central power that actually gov- 



Our Country's J^eiv Era. 29 

erns, and enjoys some at least of the fruits of domin- 
ion ; but that we should fancy that we increase our 
glory, our importance, or our happiness, by consenting 
to let such communities as I have mentioned come and 
help govern us, is a stultification one could hardly be- 
lieve possible if we had not seen it. 

That the result of it would be quick revolution and 
total new construction of the national organization, 
seems to me too plain for argument. 

For such a conglomerate organization, if it were 
formed, the term "nation" would be a misnomer. 
We sometimes speak as if there were a cosmopolitan- 
ism which is a nobler thing than nationality ; but if 
we do, our error is the same as if we should say that 
society is a nobler thing than home. The closer and 
narrower relations may savor of selfishness at times ; 
but experience does not show that greater virtue comes 
of shaking off their influence. 

The intensity of personal love for our own country 
is the necessary basis of patriotism and of all the pub- 
lic virtues. He who has weaned himself from his 
country so that he is happiest in a permanent residence 
abroad, is a man to be pitied, and not far from one to 
be despised. 

"Native land," says M. Renan, "is made up of 
body and soul. The soul, 't is our common memories, 
customs, legends, our common misfortunes, hopes, and 
griefs; the body, 'tis the soil and the race, the moun- 
tains, the rivers, and the characteristic productions," — 
"'tis this marriage between man and the country that 
makes a nation."* 

*" La patrie est un compose de corps et d'ame. L'ame, ce sont les 
souvenirs, les usages, les legendes, les malheurs, les esperances, les re- 
grets communs ; le corps, c'est le sol, la race, les montagnes, les 
fleuves, les productions characteristiques." — Renan: Les Apotres, 373. 



so 



An Address 



Cities or territories, which have aimed at cosmopoli- 
tanism, have uniformly shown the earliest loss of pa- 
triotism and nationality. From Corinth and Alexan- 
dria to Paris, their history has been substantially the 
same; populous, rich, glittering with attractions for the 
visitor, the models of fashion and luxury, making 
strangers feel at ease by the very absence of convictions 
or serious purposes of any kind: and by the total want 
of that patriotism which, to be sure, is often proud and 
exclusive, they have gone the same course downward 
till they have been the acknowledged leaders only in 
trifling pleasures or in vice. 

So far as the youth of our own country has given 
time for the development of such tendencies, our ex- 
perience does not teach a different lesson. Our cities, 
which have had most ambitious aims, and which have 
been the common ground where all races and all classes 
in life have met and mingled, are by no means the 
parts of the country to which we would look for exam- 
ples of pure democracy and good government, or for 
the safety of our institutions if any great peril were to 
come upon them from without. The very extremes of 
wealth and poverty which there meet prevent the growth 
of patriotism in great measure; for where one class 
looks upon another with eyes of jealousy and hate, it 
does not take long to conjure up the evil spirit which 
attributes poverty to the system of government, and 
plots relief by means of emeutes and revolutions. 

It is an error, then, to wish to be cosmopolitan ; it is 
a virtue to be thoroughly patriotic. Our patriotism 
will find room enough for its exercise in the effort to 
perfect our government, to promote the real good of 
all, and to make our whole system in all respects a 
model of what a free human community should be. In 



Our Country's J^ew Era. 31 

doing this there will be a far more rational field for 
glory than in such senseless expansion as I have spoken 
of. America is already one of the first of earthly 
powers in numbers and in physical force : let it be your 
ambition to make her the first in every noble fruit of 
true civilization and progress. 

As a model to her neighbors in order, thrift, and vir- 
tue within, and in honorable fair dealing and justice 
toward all other communities, she will have far higher 
rank than if she were grasping at the shadow of do- 
minion, which, as we have seen, must prove a delusion 
and a snare. 

And so the race of Americans also, cultivating every 
quality which can make them a better breed of men, 
will grow from generation to generation in all that fits 
them for permanent freedom, while they point the way 
to those of other races that may live upon their bor- 
ders or within the country, and make their example an 
encouragement and a good lesson to the world. 

I think I do not appeal in vain to the sympathies 
and the aspirations of educated American youth, when 
I invite y6ur thoughts to such subjects of study, and 
your ambition to such fields of labor. 



{ 



Our Country's New Era: 



AN ADDRESS 



Society of the Alumni 



WITTENBERG COLLEGE, 



AT THE COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT, SPRINGFIELD, OHIO. 
JUNE 25, A. D. 1873. 



HON. JACOB D.^COX 



^ SPRINGFIELD, O. : 
PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. 



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